Diana Vreeland was the outrageous fashion editor who started it all. We find out how her world of fantasy is making a comeback

Diana Vreeland in quotes

'Balenciaga did the most delicious evening clothes. Clothes aren't delicious any more' (Getty)

Photograph: Sherman/Getty

Behind every great fashion editor, there is... a bonkers musician? A brace of
royal princesses? No, behind the careers of Nicola Formichetti, Grace
Coddington, Isabella Blow, André Leon Talley and Anna Piaggi there is one
pied piper: Diana Vreeland, whose career spanned five decades in some of
fashion’s most coveted roles (fashion editor at American Harper’s Bazaar and
editor-in-chief at American Vogue) and who invented the mythical creature of
eccentric grand editrix that we know today.

A new book, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, is cashing in on our
current hunger for fashion intelligence. This autumn sees the coffee tables
piled up with new fashion tomes: three new Coco Chanel biographies,
Cristobal Balenciaga: The Shaping of a Master, Carine Roitfeld’s
autobiography, as well as books on Rick Owens, Hussein Chalayan, Gucci,
Louboutin and Cecil Beaton. “It’s a reaction to the web,” says Anna Dello
Russo, Vogue Japan’s equally